I was talking to a friend about the fact that I’ve recently started writing again – writing a novel, something I haven’t done for a while. She asked, “Why now?” and I answered that having let go a job I was no longer enjoying, and following my passion to coach full time, the freedom of that gives me headspace to turn up to the page every day, feeling fresh and alive. “I love the blank page,” I said. There was a pause on the end of the line.

“That’s quite unusual,” my friend commented. “You should write about that.”

So why it is that I turn up to write feeling relaxed and optimistic? It’s that I have absolute faith that something will come – not necessarily what I had planned, but all the better for that. It was the same with my ghost-writing clients. The best content was when something came out of them that neither of us were expecting. Those were the original ideas. There was the expansion into something new.

This is also the way I like to live. It’s a bit easier now that I don’t have the 9-5, and although once a coaching session is scheduled I need to turn up, focused and alert and present, there are longer stretches of time when there isn’t anything specific I have to do. Increasingly I can look around me with no expectation and wait till something pulls me to do it, or my body moves into action before I know exactly what I’m going to do.

When starting out, I’d say, let go any intention about what you’re going to produce, or concern about how good it is, whether anyone will read it, or what they’ll think. Just write. The only intention is words forming, whether that’s pen on paper, a document on your laptop or notes on your phone. Turn up and write. Often. 

Once the words are down there’s plenty of time to discern what it is, and who will want to read it. And it’s totally fine if the only one you want to read it is you.

Jennifer Manson is an executive coach and author who also works with inspired experts to get their message into book form. Email jennifer at theflowwriter.com.